Life and death in Paris

After many months of staying put, it is SO wonderful to be allowed back into the world, but as you never know if and when everything is once more bunkered down, we decided this summer to stay pretty close to our home base and live some months in Paris. 

The last year we have all seen how severe Covid lockdowns made the Parisian streets and boulevards almost empty, but this July, even though the throngs of tourists may not have arrived, the city seems to have completely refound its joie de vivre.

The night we arrived, the Place de la République was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dancing Parisians celebrating the lifting of the last Covid restrictions on the size of assemblies.

 There was dancing around the Marianne monument and it felt like we were celebrating the revolution or the liberation from a restrictive regime.

 But even though everyone was happy, Rita and I also felt a slightly bitter taste in our mouths.  

Many French people do not want to be vaccinated and there may well soon be a 4th covid wave that closes it all once more, but right now Paris IS indeed once more what Hemingway called 'a moveable feast'.

We can see it here - in our neighborhood  Butte Montmartre - where temporary sidewalk cafes, filled with happy people, are spreading along many of the steep, narrow streets and alleys leading up the hill.

Strangely enough, in this revitalized Paris our first stroll went to one of its necropoleis, the Cemetiere Montmartre just next to our apartment.

The Cemetière Montmartre, placed in a deepening which was once an old quarry,  is not visited by many tourists, but it is as romantic as a graveyard can get - and along its labyrinthine paths you can find the final resting place of many of the artists who lived in the fabled neighborhood.

This time around, we were looking for the grave of  Marie Duplessis - one of the courtesans of the mid-19th century Paris, who as 'La dame aux Camélias' became the inspiration for the book and play by Dumas Fils, for the Verdi opera La Traviata, for the Neumeyer ballet and some twenty movies.

She was born in the countryside in utter poverty, but at the age of 15, she moved to Paris and forced herself into the center of the capital as courtesan and hostess of an important salon. 

She was famed for her looks, her wit, and elegance, she was loved by Dumas, Franz Liszt, and many others before she died of tuberculosis, only 23 years old. 

Her funeral at Montmartre was attended by hundreds.

We looked for half an hour before we found the dilapidated grave with her picture, smiling an enigmatic smile

She was for many men, the most beautiful woman in all of Paris and now her epitaph is one of many smoldering names in a cemetery, where you see more stray cats than mourning visitors.

We should have thought of bringing her a camellia.